From Dec 13th – 16th 2018 the Bird Migration Research Station (BMRS) from the University of Gdańsk, together with the Operation Baltic Foundation, hosted the international conference on “Migrant Birds as Indicators of Climate Change”. This event was part of a larger project, “Building an Early Warning System for Biodiversity in the Face of Climate Change”, jointly funded by the National Centre for Research and Development (Poland) and the National Research Foundation (South Africa), within a research cooperation agreement between the two countries. In total 65 participants from Poland, Holland, Denmark, France, Belgium, England and South Africa gathered in Hotel Orle in at Sobieszewo Island’s Baltic coast in southern Gdańsk.

In spirit of our mission to foster flyway-scale collaborations for migrant landbird research, MLSG ExCo members Lykke Pedersen, Rien van Wijk and Wouter Vansteelant organised workshops on ‘geolocator data analysis’, ‘visualization of GPS tracking data in R’ and ‘networking’ on the first day of the conference. Antoine Grissot graciously volunteered to assist in the geolocator workshop. The workshops were found to be very useful by most participants, which is the most rewarding response we could hope for. We also hosted a speed-talk session to ensure every participant in the congress had an opportunity to showcase their work.

The conference continued with various oral sessions in which a wide range of research was covered, ranging methodological aspects of acoustic monitoring and geolocator tracking, to environmental drivers of migrant movements and population changes.

The MLSG believes that establishing more collaborative research networks such as the one that exists between Poland and South-Africa will be key to achieve full annual cycle understanding of migrant birds and the development of effective conservation strategies. It was a great pleasure for us to be able to support this great event.